Windows 10 reminder/app/Icon......... gone

Yep it's not for everybody. I told my sis just to stick with Win7. Means I get less phone calls then

I don't blame you. Most of my clients use windows 7. Windows 8 was a joke and I think businesses will tend to adopt a 'wait and see' for windows 10. I used to use windows at home for many many years (moving through NT, 2000, XP and 7) and at work for equally as long but I grew tired of rebuilding windows every few years. I use a mac pro now for my business (the one that looks like a cylinder). I just want a computer to work - I don't want to waste time and money rebuilding registries, messing around with drivers and going through all the other things needed to keep a windows PC running smoothly.
To be honest, the mac is much quicker, more reliable and generally more productive. I love it.

I had a close shave the other day.

Doing a manual windows update (windows 7), the Windows 10 update had slipped itself in as an item on the "Optional" tab, and it was pre-selected.

Thought that was a bit naughty...

I almost did exactly the same Dave just a few days back, that Windows 10 icon pestering you to install has been a real pain, thankfully now it has gone.

I have found the windows 10 icon and information keep popping up almost an invasion of my privacy.

I appreciate all your points. I realise that there are people who are vocally pro-windows or pro-mac, and indeed I have also used the arguments that you mention in the past when discussing the benefits of windows and the disadvatanges of mac machines before I started to actually use them.

I feel windows 7 is 'good enough' and 'stable enough' for many users. Its an improvement on the earlier versions I have to admit.

However, as you know, there are production servers running some variety of unix or linux that are not rebooted for many months at a time. By contrast, production windows servers need to be rebooted or services running on them need to be bounced far more often.

I have lost count of the number of problems I've encountered with windows machines over the last twenty years. I have had far fewer problems with unix machines.

I was tempted to go into a big list of windows problems but I've edited the post to make it shorter.

If you're happy being a computer hobbyist and tinkering with your computer, when things don't work, then, sure, you can live with windows.

However, if you simply want to be productive on your workstation with minimum fuss, then a mac is actually very very good because it has a nice front end lying on top of a stable linux platform.
At first I found it a little hard to adjust to (coming from windows) but, because its built on linux, you have the ability to run shell scripts grep for processes, mount filesystems. You also have the ability to run windows on a virtual machine if you want (which I sometimes do).
When I decided to buy new workstations for the business, I thought long and hard about what platform to use. I was however swayed my a number of my collegues (also computer professionals) who have moved towards using mac computers because they were tired, as I am, of endless tinkering to keep the machine running smoothly.

Additionally, for the work we do, the mac pro is simply a better machine for the job. The software is better, and the OS is head and shoulders faster and more stable than the windows boxes. We can always run windows on a VM if we want to perform a task where only windows software exists.
Overall I estimate that wasted time due to support issues has gone down by 75% since we started using mac computers and I recommend that you should seriously consider it.

Why? because users just want their machines to work.
Its a tool, not a hobby, and it shouldn't take time (=money) and effort to keep it reliable.

I don't think our SQL server has been rebooted for 2.5 years and that was probably to install something like the Red Gate software. When I remotely connect to that machine it's slow despite the amount of memory and cores as most of the memory is assigned to SQL and not so much to the OS.

The business world doesn't just run one OS, its generally a combination of several. Our production server runs Unix and Cobol. Been like that since IT was part of the company I think. Some of our programs were probably initially written 30 years ago. We utilised client/server technology when it was in its infancy. MS is the backbone of our office, I guess that would be at least a guesstimation of 10,000 PC's. So not an easy task to replace, should you even want to contemplate it.

So there are preferred OS's for the task at hand. We did have a Mac in the office about 12 years ago utilised for graphical reasons, that's was its only task.

I'm not sure if Win10 is treated as a tradititional updates as I've never see the notification (we control Win updates through WSUS) but assuming it is you should be able to ignore the update in Windows Update in Control Panel.

Ex Of course pcs are widely used with the majority of businesses running them and of course business uses a mixture. My point is that for an individual user or a small business a mac makes a lot of sense. Most large businesses have invested too heavily in Windows for administration (although often not for mission critical tasks) to change direction. Just because pcs are common, however, that doesn't make them better. Using that logic, a Ford is better than a Mercedes because just it's more common and cheaper. In my experience, I have found macs cheaper and less troublesome to. support and for the average home user with uncomplicated needs I would seriously recommend trying one.
That's not to say that pcs can't do mission critical tasks. I've worked with banks that ran trading platform and back end using pc. Others using Unix. Have to say the Unix systems were less bother.

I am also a professional developer. I have just not chosen to tie my livelihood to the whims of Microsoft. However, given that I have many years experience using, developing and designing systems that use Windows, and indeed am working with a client that uses windows, that should make my viewpoint more believable.

Different organizations have different experiences with windows servers, depending on the complexity of their needs. One of my current investment banking clients runs a production system of around a thousand windows servers globally to run a distributed trading platform. The trading system needs constant support, and frankly, needs more support than an equivalent system in another bank that runs solaris. Both of these organisations have an understandably rigorous requirement in terms of system uptime.

I wanted to be clear that by 'system reboot' I do not mean an unexpected machine restart. I mean the necessity to restart the server because of either memory issues, or mysterious failures of some processes to work correctly. Whilst it might be argued that this is the fault of the software, when using servers running hundreds of processes, I have seen this type of issue affect windows servers far more often than I would like.

As a technical point, Mac OS-X is no longer an OpenStep compliant OS. The programming environment is largely based on that, but contains elements of BSD and I believe other specific customizations. Howeveer it is very similar to linux and for the purposes of this forum I felt that description was sufficient.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that Mac networks are rolled out across businesses. I'm pointing out that for home users and small business they actually work very well and for the average home user, they tend to do what is needed without the need for constant tinkering.
This thread should be proof enough that non expert users need unending support with their windows machines.

If you will 'never' use a mac for your own use, fair enough. I don't see why though. They are actually very good and very reliable. I have no emotional attatchment to the operating system. It's a piece of software that runs on a tool that I use to make my living.

You dont delete the update dom, just ignore. It then shouldn't moan to you that it wants to do the update next time it checks with Windows Update Server

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff382716.aspx